A leading Democratic senator in California’s legislature, Yee was a staunch gun-control advocate who authored California Senate Bill 249, which mandated that all California assault weapons be as difficult and cumbersome to reload as 18th-century flintlocks.

“While most gun owners are law-abiding,” Yee said in a 2012 press release, “it is a fact that such weapons are more likely to be used to kill an innocent person than used in self-defense.”

Yee’s position on guns was surely colored by his own association with them. You see, last July, Democratic Senator Leland Yee pled guilty to “purchasing weapons from the Philippines to import into the United States” for “one or more checks made payable to my Secretary of State campaign,” Yee admitted in a plea agreement.

According to a sworn affidavit from an undercover FBI agent, Yee said his Asian arms contact had “things that you guys want” and that dealing with this particular thug was not for “the faint of heart… He’s going to rely on me, because ultimately it’s going to be me [that completes the arms deal].”

In fact, Yee told the FBI agent that he hoped to expand his roster of gunrunning contacts “because I’m getting a little more into this; it’s not just Russia; the Muslim countries have sources too.”

Yee added he was “agnostic” when it came to the illicit gun trade because “people want to get whatever they want to get. Do I care? No, I don’t care.”

Yee was desperate to win the office of secretary of state and needed lots of cash. Had he won, his duties would include declaring winners in statewide elections. If people died in the process, well, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

Now, imagine all the power that would have given Yee, the California Democratic Party and their close Chinatown criminal associates.

One of 19 men captured in the FBI dragnet that snagged Leland Yee, which followed an eight-year investigation, was Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow.

Criminal organizations are a lot like families, extended through friendships and associations. One such contact was Shrimp Boy’s business partner Norman Hsu, whom the New York Times described in 2007 as “a wealthy donor to many Democratic candidates, and a bundler of campaign contributions to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2007.”

“Democratic Party officials have said Mr. Hsu soon became recognized as someone who could raise large amounts of money quickly; by last year he was holding events for Mrs. Clinton and had earned the title of “Hillraiser,’ meaning he bundled more than $100,000 for her [2008] presidential campaign. All told, he has personally contributed more than $600,000 to [Democratic] candidates across the country,” said the Times.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Hsu engaged in “‘arm twisting’ a network of about 300 investors, acquaintances and friends, he said. The Clinton campaign said it subsequently gave the money to the U.S. Treasury.”

A lateral transfer from one criminal organization to another.

Hsu was later convicted for running a pyramid scheme and violating campaign finance laws. The appeal to his conviction was met with consternation by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which said, “Hsu’s investments and campaign schemes overlapped. He used political connections created by his campaign fundraising to create an appearance of legitimacy used in recruiting victims to his investment scam, and used the illusions of successful investments to recruit his investors as campaign ‘donors.’”

Just the sort of unsavory characters one expects to find orbiting “like planets” around the Clinton criminal organization.